from the let's-try-this-again dept

Have you heard the story about how Uber was tracking ex-users even after they had deleted the app from their phone? You'd have to be living under a rock to have missed it. It came from a fascinating NY Times profile of Uber's CEO/founder Travis Kalanick and is the opening anecdote, and then it started spreading like wildfire across social media.

Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, visited Apple’s headquarters in early 2015 to meet with Timothy D. Cook, who runs the iPhone maker. It was a session that Mr. Kalanick was dreading.

For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple’s engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had been secretly identifying and tagging iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a fraud detection maneuver that violated Apple’s privacy guidelines.

But Apple was onto the deception, and when Mr. Kalanick arrived at the midafternoon meeting sporting his favorite pair of bright red sneakers and hot-pink socks, Mr. Cook was prepared. “So, I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” Mr. Cook said in his calm, Southern tone. Stop the trickery, Mr. Cook then demanded, or Uber’s app would be kicked out of Apple’s App Store.

Except, if you actually read what the NY Times said it notes that what the company was doing was an anti-fraud detection. Did it break Apple's rules and go too far? Yes, absolutely. Was it bad? Probably. Was it tracking users who deleted the app? No, not at all. Again, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Uber or to dislike its business practices or its management. But that's no excuse to oversell a story that already looks bad. Uber clearly broke the rules and used a fairly sketchy maneuver to track phones to prevent fraud -- but that's not the same as tracking users who deleted the app. Wired has a pretty clear summary of what actually happened:

Fingerprinting, in and of itself, has plenty of non-invasive uses. Uber, for example, deployed it to help prevent fraud. Being able to identify when a device reinstalls a particular app helps developers spot phones that are, say, bouncing around the black market. In Uber’s case, fingerprinting kept drivers, especially those in China, from gaming a promotion that rewarded them for maximizing ride volume. The company discovered that some drivers were buying stolen phones, creating dummy Uber accounts, and using those phones to call for rides.

When someone uninstalls an app that uses fingerprinting, it leaves behind a small piece of code that can be used as an identifier if the app is ever reinstalled on the device. For the iOS App Store, Apple originally permitted developers to keep track of their users over time using a broad Unique Device Identifier (UDID). Beginning with iOS 5, though, Apple scaled this back, because of the potential privacy implications of giving developers permission to individually ID users even after their app had been uninstalled. Instead, Apple turned to more limited mechanisms, like advertising IDs and vendor IDs. These still give developers the ability to do fraud defense, but with less leeway for potential privacy abuse.

Uber took it one step further, which is to say, one step too far, using application program interfaces designed to access data like an iPhone’s device registry and Apple-assigned serial number.

Again: this is not excusing what Uber did. It clearly broke Apple's rules, and using this kind of fingerprinting can have some problematic consequences for privacy. And, yes, because everything Uber does seems to come included with some secondary component that makes even reasonable actions look bad, the company geofenced Apple's headquarters to try to try to hide the fact that it was doing this. That seems like a pretty blatant admission that the company knew it was breaking Apple's rules. It just doesn't mean that the company was tracking you after you deleted its app.

I certainly understand that there's a long list of actions by Uber that make people not trust the company. And that's completely valid. But if you're going to attack the company, it should be for the bad actions that the company actually did, rather than the exaggerated and misleading descriptions that start spreading across social media.

from the what? dept

The absolute scariest cab ride of my life happened in Rome a few years back, and I'd prefer not to relive that experience, but apparently I might not have much of a choice next time I'm in Italy, as the country recently banned Uber completely, claiming that it was "unfair competition." Now, let's be clear: there are many, many reasons to not like or trust Uber. You certainly have every right to not like the way it goes about its business or the way it treats drivers. You can refuse to use the service all you want and you can tweet #DeleteUber and whatever else you like... and yet you still should be concerned about this.

Uber isn't being blocked in Italy because of its business practices. It's being blocked in Italy because the taxicabs there don't like the competition, and a court has ruled that those cabs shouldn't face competition. Again, no matter what you think of Uber's own business practices, it's pretty damn clear that everywhere that Uber or similar services operate, what everyday people tend to get are better options for transportation. It makes it easier for people to get a ride when they need it, it adds much needed supply to the market, and it tends to be a better overall experience (and there's at least some evidence that it also prevents drunk driving).

In the end, when it comes to innovation, our general stance around here is that what you need more than anything else is competition. Competition drives innovation. It drives better customer service. Having courts come in and block competition in favor of an organization famous for limiting the number of competitors in the market is never going to be a good thing. If you're upset by Uber's business practices, target those business practices. But doing an outright ban on competition doesn't seem to help anyone, other than the legacy taxi providers.

from the will-judge-alsup-design-his-own-lidar? dept

Judge William Alsup certainly continues to make himself known for how he handles technology-intensive cases. In techie circles, he's mostly known for presiding over the Oracle/Google Java API copyright case, and the fact that he claimed to have learned to program in Java to better understand the issues in the case (in which he originally ruled, correctly, that APIs were not subject to copyright protection, only to be overturned by an appeals court that simply couldn't understand the difference between an API and functional code). He's also been on key cases around the no fly list and is handling some Malibu Media copyright trolling cases as well.

And, last month, he was handed another big high-profile case regarding copying and Google: the big self-driving car dispute between Google's (or "Alphabet's") Waymo self-driving car company and Uber. In case you weren't following it, Waymo accused a former top employee of downloading a bunch of technical information on the LiDAR system it designed, only to then start his own self-driving car company, Otto, which was then bought up by Uber in a matter of months. Most of the lawsuit is focused on trade secrets, with a few patent claims thrown in as well.

Either way, Judge Alsup appears to want to be educated on LiDAR before the case begins. In two orders last week, Judge Alsup first asked lawyers for each side to present a basic tutorial on the basics of self-driving car technology:

For a tutorial for the judge, counsel shall please make presentations to set forth the basic
technology in the public domain and prior art bearing on the trade secrets and patents at issue
on the motion for provisional relief. Please do not refer to the actual systems or subsystems
used by either party. (Those will be presumably covered in the motion papers.) For the tutorial,
please refer only to what is in the public domain or prior art, regardless of whether or not one
side or the other actually practices it. That is, in the tutorial, please do not say what the parties
actually practice but if the item is in the public domain, you may reference the public domain
part, even if one side or the other practices it. Make sure that all points in the tutorial reside in
books, treatises, articles, public interviews, public videos, blogs, websites, seminars,
presentations, Form 10-Ks, or other publicly verifiable sources. Please exchange approximate
scripts beforehand so that each side may vet the other. Each side will have forty minutes on
APRIL 12 AT 10:00 A.M. The public may attend the entire presentation. The judge is interested
in learning the basic technology and learning publicly known art.

I'm kinda disappointed that I've got something else that I can't get out of that day so that I can't attend. Oh, and Judge Alsup also got some press attention for then asking that each side might want to send "young lawyers" for the tutorial:

This would be a good
opportunity for a young lawyer to present in court.

Of course, Judge Alsup actually has a bit of a history of doing similar things. If I remember correctly, he made a similar suggestion in the Oracle/Google case as well, and people have noted he's done it before as well. The idea is that he wants to encourage firms to enable younger, less experienced lawyers to get more courtroom experience and find areas where you don't necessarily need the veteran partner, even in a high-profile clash among mutli-billion dollar behemoths.

Still, it was another request that came a few days later that has gotten more attention (first spotted by Julia Carrie Wong), in which Judge Alsup also asked each side to recommend a book for him to read about LiDAR. But not just any book. You see, Judge Alsup wants you to know that he's not a total noob when it comes to light and optics, so don't feel the need to send him "LiDAR for Dummies" or whatever:

The judge requests each side to name one (and only one) book, treatise, article or other
reference publicly available that will inform him about LiDAR, and particularly its application
to self-driving vehicles.

Please keep in mind that the judge is already familiar with basic light and optics
principles involving lens, such as focal lengths, the non-linear nature of focal points as a
function of distance of an object from the lens, where objects get focused to on a screen behind
the lens, and the use of a lens to project as well as to focus. So, most useful would be literature
on adapting LiDAR to self-driving vehicles, including various strategies for positioning
light-emitting diodes behind the lens for best overall effect, as well as use of a single lens to
project outgoing light as well as to focus incoming reflections (other than, of course, the patents
in suit). The judge wishes to learn the prior art and public domain art bearing on the patents in
suit and trade secrets in suit.

Now I'm just waiting to find out that Judge Alsup, tinkering alone in his garage (or, better yet, at the Courthouse), will build his own damn LiDAR system, just to better understand the technology at play.

I don't always agree with Judge Alsup on stuff (I don't always agree with anyone), but I respect his desire to go deep in trying to understand the core technologies when he's reviewing cases on those subjects. That's (unfortunately) quite different than many other judges. Hopefully more judges adopt Judge Alsup's practices on cases like these.

from the cf:-some-shit-we-made-up-at-that-other-stop dept

Fortunately for law enforcement officers (but not so much for lowly citizens), courts have routinely affirmed that officers don't need to know the laws they're enforcing to stay in the law enforcement business. No one expects cops to be legal scholars, but the least they could do is get a second opinion when they're faced with a situation where applicable laws may -- or just as frequently, may not -- exist.

We've seen nonexistent laws abused before. Most of the time, a perceived moving violation acts as the groundwork for a fishing expedition. This is fine, sayeth the courts. Other times, nonexistent laws are cited to shut down photographers or harass people otherwise minding their own business.

The perfect storm of law enforcement beclownery occurs when they interact with someone who actually knows the law. The bluffing commences in a real-time display of "our word against yours," with officers assisting each other in collective ignorance because, if might makes right, then a united citation of nonexistent statutes by armed men is the rightest thing of all.

A Wilmington police sergeant is shown on video instructing a citizen who was pulled over for a traffic stop that he is not allowed to record the interaction due to a new state law prohibiting the recording of police interactions.

Shortly after that, a New Hanover County Sheriff's deputy agrees with the officer that there is a new state law. There is no such law in North Carolina.

The citizen was defense attorney Jesse Bright, who drives for Uber in his spare time. The cops arrested his passenger, then cited a nonexistent law in hopes of preventing him from recording the encounter.

The entire stop lasted more than 20 minutes, culminating in a drug dog sniff of the vehicle (in which the drug dog may or may not have alerted -- officers refused to tell Bright what this dog's alert looked like). The dog apparently gave the officers permission to search Bright's car. Nothing illegal was found. And the only people being evasive or disingenuous were the police officers, who answered Bright's direct questions vaguely or not at all.

Fortunately for Bright -- who will presumably be filing a civil rights lawsuit -- the entire dog-and-jackass show was recorded on his camera. Sure, some of the responding officers were wearing body cams, but it usually takes litigation (or the threat thereof) to liberate this footage. And, in many cases, what's turned over is incomplete, either due to redaction or mysteriously-malfunctioning/unactivated recording devices.

There are two raw recordings at WECT's site. The first is the Q&A session in which Bright is told he's violating a nonexistent recording law. The second shows the K-9 sniff and subsequent vehicle search.

On the bright side, the officers' employer isn't defending their actions.

Chief Ralph Evangelous issued the following statement Wednesday in response to the videos:

“Taking photographs and videos of people that are in plain sight including the police is your legal right. As a matter of fact we invite citizens to do so when they believe it is necessary. We believe that public videos help to protect the police as well as our citizens and provide critical information during police and citizen interaction.”

The WPD stated that each officer will be given this statement to read as well.

A sheriff's deputy was also on hand for the mini-debacle, but he has already been cleared by his agency. However, the sheriff's department also made it clear there is no law against recording officers.

Sheriff McMahon has viewed the Uber driver’s video and believes it is clear that Officers were incorrect in stating that it was illegal to record the encounter. Not only does the Sheriff agree that it is legal to record encounters, he invites citizens to do so. As a result, the Deputy involved has been counseled.

Additionally, in keeping with Sheriff McMahon’s practice of openness and transparency with the citizens that we serve, he has instructed his Staff to ensure that each Deputy has been provided with information about the citizen’s right to record encounters with law enforcement officers.

But for video, as they say. Bright's video of the encounter wasn't held up by red tape, angry union officials, poorly-written public records laws, department stonewalling or a plain old [FILE NOT FOUND] error. His was self-released expeditiously, providing an indisputable account of the events. This possibly explains the lack of law enforcement dissembling or statements insisting everyone should just wait until all the [favorable] facts are in.

from the bad-idea dept

Crisis management must be a full-time job at Uber. I've argued in the past that some of the attacks on the company are greatly exaggerated, but it keeps running into crisis after crisis -- many of them avoidable. The latest is a big scoop in the NY Times about how Uber has a special program called Greyball (a play on "blackball," get it?) that helped it determine if regulators were trying to get rides and then avoid sending a car. Here are the basics from the article by Mike Isaac:

One technique involved drawing a digital perimeter, or “geofence,” around the government offices on a digital map of a city that Uber was monitoring. The company watched which people were frequently opening and closing the app — a process known internally as eyeballing — near such locations as evidence that the users might be associated with city agencies.

Other techniques included looking at a user’s credit card information and determining whether the card was tied directly to an institution like a police credit union.

Enforcement officials involved in large-scale sting operations meant to catch Uber drivers would sometimes buy dozens of cellphones to create different accounts. To circumvent that tactic, Uber employees would go local electronics stores to look up device numbers of the cheapest mobile phones for sale, which were often the ones bought by city officials working with budgets that were not sizable.

In response, Uber has claimed that the program was designed to greylist "terms of service violators", but if that's the case it can just kick them off the service and tell them they violated the ToS. From the report, it seems clear that even if the program was used for ToS violators, it was also used against regulators.

I've certainly been vocal about the fact that I think city and state regulations limiting Uber/Lyft and the like are generally bad ideas. What may have started out as a good idea to prevent cabbies taking advantage of riders has turned into quite a corrupt system used to limit competition and artificially inflate prices. I think that the idea behind Uber and Lyft and similar services is super powerful. But, that doesn't mean the company should get a pass for this kind of stuff.

Directly building an app to avoid regulators just looks really, really shady, and it's going to come back to haunt you (just ask Zenefits or Volkswagen). And while the article claims that the tool might be a CFAA violation, I don't see how that's possible, unless it involved even more nefarious activities under the hood (none of what's revealed in the article would seem to qualify as a CFAA violation, even under the really stretched interpretations of the CFAA that we've seen).

The bigger question, honestly, is why do this kind of stuff? I'll never understand why companies feel the need to take the shadiest route possible, when they could have just gone with the upfront path of explaining why what they're doing is so useful and powerful, and fighting for it, rather than trying to play silly games. Yes, you can make arguments about how they're trying to grow rapidly, and yes, (as we've discussed) these local regulators are often a nuisance for bad reasons. But this kind of stuff is clearly going to bounce back and create problems later on. Just fight these fights head on, without playing shady games that undermine basically everything else about your business.

from the this-is-bad dept

You may have heard, recently, about a series of reports about sexual harassment (and general sexism and other similarly awful behavior) in Silicon Valley. It's not a new thing, but it's getting a lot of necessary attention right now and it's seriously messed up. It's unacceptable. It needs to stop -- and people need to speak up about it, and to come down hard on anyone who's engaging in it or letting it slide. If you're doing the kind of crap being discussed, stop it now (and go apologize). If someone tells you you're acting inappropriately, listen to them. And if you see someone else doing something awful, tell them to knock it off and then follow through.

It's no secret that, in general, I'm a fan of Silicon Valley and the innovations that are created here. Indeed, it's been argued by some that I'm too supportive of Silicon Valley at times. But, to me, it's the innovation that's important, and the way that it can make our lives better. When companies are doing bad things that can negatively impact that innovation, they should be called out on it. For example, a few years ago, we thought it was a good thing that many companies in Silicon Valley got into serious trouble for colluding to prevent poaching of workers from one another. That was bad news, anti-competitive and anti-innovation. As we've discussed for years, widespread job mobility is a key component to innovation in the tech sector.

Another thing that's a key component to innovation? Diversity and a range of perspectives and ideas. That's one of the (many) reasons we've advocated for more immigration for high tech workers and also against this administration's effort to restrict immigration of all kinds. The basic human issues behind it are most important, but the diversity of viewpoints and perspectives is in there as well. To create better innovations that help the world, we need it to be driven by more than just a subset of the population who come from similar backgrounds.

That's another reason why it sucks to see more and more evidence of massive, and widespread, sexism and sexual harassment in Silicon Valley. Again, this isn't something new. It's been going on for a while. But it's finally getting some necessary sunlight. It kicked off with a somewhat horrifying post by Susan Fowler about her experiences at Uber, in which the HR department appeared to bend over backwards to not do anything in response to repeated reports of seriously inappropriate behavior at the company. The Guardian has now published a similar account from an engineer at Tesla.

The Guardian also has another article detailing even more horrific stories of totally inappropriate behavior towards women. I've seen some arguing that at least some of these claims are exaggerated, but that doesn't matter and it's a bullshit excuse. Just the fact that anything even remotely like this happened is disgusting and unacceptable.

Haana was so repulsed by what happened to her, she covered up her mirror so she wouldn’t have to look at herself. The Silicon Valley tech worker said that after drinks with startup colleagues last year, a male executive at her company put his hand up her shirt and groped her while they walked down the street.

“I felt disgusted for months after that,” said Haana, who requested that the Guardian not include her full name or identify the small tech startup where she used to do marketing. “It affects me on a level that I wish it didn’t.”

I know that this doesn't happen everywhere and it doesn't happen to everyone, but it appears to be happening. And if it's happening anywhere it's happening too much. The NY Times has a story mostly about the situation at Uber, but it also includes the following anecdote:

“This stuff is deeply entrenched,” Ms. Kapor Klein said, relaying a story she had recently heard about a group of programmers at a different tech company. “I heard about this engineer who said that what he and his friends do at work for fun is rate women job applicants according to who they wanted to marry, or who they wanted to kill, and there was a third thing.” Suffice it to say the third thing was not the women’s qualifications for the job in question.

You know what the third thing is. It's a dumb party joke game that has always been stupid in that kind of setting. Bringing it into the office is horrifying. I'll admit that I don't get to experience this. I'm a white guy in Silicon Valley. But the more you talk to people, the more you find out how frequently this happens. I've wanted to believe that it's not widespread around here -- but that doesn't appear to be the case at all. It is widespread, and it's happening all the time. There are just too many stories -- and each time it's allowed, it just enables more to happen. That has to stop.

Part of the lore of Silicon Valley is that so-called "disruptive innovation" sometimes involves breaking some rules, or at least pushing the boundaries of norms. And, for the sake of innovation, that's often worthwhile. But it needs to be done for the sake of innovation, and it shouldn't mean that all other basic human decency goes out the window at the same time. Silicon Valley has faced a lot of criticism over the last couple of years -- much of it unjustified in my opinion. But shit like this undermines all of that on so many levels. It's disgusting and inhumane. It's stupid and self-defeating.

For a long time, I've resisted the description many (frequently outsiders) have given to the culture at many Silicon Valley startups and tech firms that it's a "fraternity-like culture." Because so many of the people and companies I've known are absolutely nothing like that. But it's clear that some are very much like that -- and, no doubt, the success and money and public attention that Silicon Valley has been getting has driven more people to show up believing that's the culture, and then making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's bad.

It needs to stop. It should stop because treating women that way is just wrong -- full stop (treating anyone that way is just wrong -- but it mostly happens to women). You shouldn't need to read beyond that (and you should really know that already). But if that's not a good enough reason for you (and if it's not, check your priorities, because they're messed up), you can pile on many others: a lack of diversity (which goes beyond just the male/female issue) is really damaging for innovation. It leads to less innovation and less interesting innovation. Having a diversity of perspectives and insights is what makes innovation happen faster and it makes that innovation more powerful. You get more with diversity and it should be embraced, celebrated and sought after. You also can get a better understanding of a much larger market. Building products solely from a singular perspective and viewpoint limits who will use your products and how. On top of that, Silicon Valley and many of its innovations are under attack from a variety of different directions -- and that's likely to continue. Giving more ammunition to critics by doing stupid stuff like harassing women and treating people like crap makes things much, much worse. But, again, even adding these justifications seems silly to me, because the first one should be enough.

Yes, people like to make fun of the "we're changing the world" attitude that is often exuded from this region of the country. But here's the thing: it's often true. Many of the innovations from this small area of the world really have changed the wider world around us, and there's plenty of opportunity to do more of that. And over the years, I've met and dealt with tons of people for whom changing the world and making it a better place truly is a driving force. But, there are a lot of people here and not everyone is driven by the same motivations. And some people just don't know how to behave. If Silicon Valley is going to continue to lead the world in innovation, it needs to stamp out this kind of behavior completely. It is completely unacceptable and it shouldn't be left just upon those who are the vicitims of that kind of activity to speak up. We should all be speaking up and should be calling out any sort of inappropriate behavior like that.

from the get-the-market-right dept

For years, we had pointed out that one of the nice things about the new generation of tech companies was that they rarely seemed to use patents offensively. Yes, they were subject to tons of patent lawsuits from trolls or from legacy players trying to hang on against innovators, but we've pointed out in the past that young companies innovate, while older companies litigate. So, we have a tendency to watch companies to see when they shift from being patent litigation defenders, to going on the offensive. For years -- even as patent system supporters falsely claimed that Google only existed because of patents -- it was good to see not a single example of Google going on the offensive and filing patent lawsuits against other companies.

That changed, unfortunately, back in 2012 when Google brought a patent lawsuit against Apple. Some argued that it wasn't "really" Google, because it came from Motorola, a company that Google had purchased (mainly for the patents) and then only owned for a short while before dumping, but it was still a Google-owned property going on the offensive. At that time, we argued that if Google really wanted to support patent reform (as the company claimed) then it should stop being a patent aggressor.

To its credit, I don't believe the company went on the offensive again... until just now. As has been widely reported, Google's Waymo subsidiary (which works on Google's self-driving cars) has sued Uber over its self-driving car technology, which Uber obtained last year, in purchasing another startup, Otto, for its self-driving car technology. Otto, of course, was founded by a former Google/Waymo guy. Just a few weeks ago, Bloomberg had written that a bunch of early Google car team members had left to found Otto in part because Google had paid them a ridiculous sum of money, so they no longer needed to stay there.

Along with the lawsuit, both in the filing itself and in a separate blog post about the lawsuit, Waymo tries to bend over backwards to say that this situation is not your typical "patent" lawsuit, but a very specific one. Indeed, the company is clear that the patent issue is a lesser concern. The larger one is over trade secrets -- and here the company is fairly specific that Otto's founder, and several early employees, appear to have deliberately copied a huge amount of proprietary info from Google/Waymo before departing:

Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber’s LiDAR circuit board — except its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo’s unique LiDAR design.

We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo’s various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo’s LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo’s design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo’s highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.

Beyond Mr. Levandowki’s actions, we discovered that other former Waymo employees, now at Otto and Uber, downloaded additional highly confidential information pertaining to our custom-built LiDAR including supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information.

If accurate, that does sound fairly deliberate and sneaky. And you can certainly understand why the company is upset. The main focus of the lawsuit is the trade secrets claim. But the lawsuit also makes claims for patent infringement on three separate patents as well.

Again, you can understand why this situation would be frustrating for Waymo/Google. And maybe the direct evidence of downloading all that material prior to leaving Google is a legitimate reason to file a lawsuit. But it still seems problematic. When Elon Musk freed up all of Tesla's patents, he made it quite clear the reason he was doing so was that this was a brand new, emerging market, and it was going to need all the help it could get in becoming established. And that meant lots of companies competing and innovating and together educating the market. Thus, it didn't really matter if new entrants copied Tesla's electric car/battery technology, because in the end it would help create a larger market that helped everyone.

That same situation is true for self-driving cars as well. Even given the presence of the potential smoking gun of the downloads of documents, there's still something to the idea that the market would be a lot better off if everyone were just building the best possible self-driving car tech they could find, even if that means copying one another. Fighting over trade secrets and patents in a market that barely even exists feels silly. Yes, from a purely profit maximizing standpoint, you can understand the argument: the larger share of the market you can capture early can make a huge difference. But why not focus on executing in the marketplace and fighting the battles that are blocking the adoption of self-driving cars, rather than fighting back and forth with each other.

from the calm-down-people dept

Okay, let's start this out by admitting that there are plenty of reasons that people really dislike Uber, and I know that some people have a kneejerk hatred for the company. For a variety of reasons, in some people's minds, Uber represents the very worst of Silicon Valley. While I do think that the company has had some issues -- especially around privacy -- many of the complaints around Uber have been greatly exaggerated or distorted. But none have been quite as ridiculously distorted and exaggerated as the online reaction Saturday night to Uber's decision to drop its infamous "surge pricing" at JFK due to protests there. That resulted in a "#DeleteUber" hashtag going viral and being passed around by many, many people -- including many of my friends who I normally agree with on most things.

The whole thing doesn't make any sense to me and seemed quite ridiculously unfair to Uber (and, sure, some will argue that the company deserves whatever shit it gets, but to me it lessens people's credibility when they throw a fit over something where it appears they took things entirely out of context). So here's the background. As you are, by now, no doubt aware, on Saturday night there were protests all around the US, mainly at major airports, concerning people who were arriving from overseas at those airports, and being barred (or worse, sent back on other flights) in response to President Trump's new executive order concerning individuals born in seven particular countries. As part of this, the NY Taxi Workers Association announced a one-hour work stoppage to protest the executive order:

This resulted in many people assuming that this was Uber "breaking the strike" and basically undermining the protest message made by the NYC taxi drivers. And with many people already predisposed to dislike Uber, a meme was born. This was complicated even further by the fact that Uber's CEO, Travis Kalanick, is on one of Donald Trump's "economic councils." Some argued that it meant that he was supportive of Trump and all of Trump's plans, even as Kalanick made it clear that he didn't support the plan and planned to use his access to tell Trump why the plan was bad. But, it didn't matter. Tons and tons of people started tweeting that Uber was evil for supporting Trump and "breaking the strike."

But this makes no sense. The more I looked at it, the more I realized that no matter what Uber did, some people would have likely twisted it into being a way to bash Uber. Here were the options:

Leave surge pricing in place: People would still argue that Uber "broke the strike" and, even worse, they'd argue that the "greedy" company was "profiteering" off of it by charging much higher rates. Dropping surge pricing actually decreases the supply of drivers, decreases the profit for the company and actually doesn't help Uber very much, because it means longer waits and fewer riders and drivers.

Stop offering service to/from JFK: People would argue that this was Uber actively working to stop people from getting to the protests, especially since there was a period of time when the police were blocking the AirTrain, which is JFK's main connection to the NYC subway system.

Stay silent: If only that were possible. My twitter feed over the weekend was full of reporters from major publications tweeting out over and over again their demands from basically every tech company to put out a statement or do something. And, indeed, Uber's CEO had sent out an email making it pretty clear that he didn't support the executive order at all, and that they were actively looking to help Uber drivers who were impacted by all of this.

And then, of course, there was the final option, which was dropping surge pricing, which was probably (quite reasonably!) seen inside the company as a show of support for the protestors, in that they were making it cheaper for people to get to and from JFK to take part in the protests.

I brought this point up with some on Twitter, and their response was that even if it was well intentioned, it didn't matter, because the impact was to "undermine" the work stoppage. That's also silly. Of all things, my undergrad degree is actually in labor relations, and that included multiple semesters of labor history and studying all sorts of things related to work stoppages and the like. When the point of a work stoppage is to push for better wages, then obviously, scabs or breaking a strike, is reasonably problematic to that strategy. But that's not what the NYC taxicab drivers were doing. They weren't making Donald Trump's life any harder (I'm reasonably assuming, he wasn't waiting for a cab from Terminal 4). What they were doing was a symbolic protest to make it widely know that they don't approve. And they accomplished that mission. Uber's decision had no impact on it (and, arguably, drew more attention to the protest).

So, sure, if you don't like Uber for this, that, or the other thing, feel free to continue to dislike Uber for those reasons. But if you deleted your Uber app because you thought it somehow "broke the strike," you massively overreacted and got sucked in by a meme that involved taking things out of context and misrepresenting reality.

Admittedly, there was one thing that Uber could have done, and didn't -- which was the strategy that its main competitor Lyft did take: announcing plans to donate $1 million to the ACLU (over the course of four years) directly in response to the executive order. This is actually a really great move by Lyft, and kudos to them. Kalanick later announced a $3 million "legal" fund to help Uber drivers, but that's not quite the same thing. Directly donating to organizations that will fight the executive order is a great thing and Lyft deserves lots of kudos for it -- but it's still a bit silly to argue that every company had to take that step to not be the target of a massive negative campaign.

from the policy-fight! dept

In highly regulated private industries the law means what it says – right up until a regulator decides that it doesn't. For that reason Uber, a company with a reputation for aggressively challenging legal norms, must have been particularly frustrated when the California Department of Motor Vehicles decided to publicly rebuke it for complying with the law of the Golden State.

The crux of the issue is that Uber decided to move forward with deploying some of its vehicles with automated technologies onto California's roads without a permit which, the California DMV believes, it must first obtain before rolling out.

In a statement, the DMV said that it has a "permitting process in place" through which twenty manufacturers have obtained permits. Then, so as to leave no double about its position on the matter, stated that "Uber shall do the same."

Now, whether the new Volvo XC90's equipped with Uber's technologies are "autonomous vehicles" as a matter of perception or regulatory projection is up for debate. Different people have different ideas about what fits that mold. But, when it comes to whether the DMV should take action to slow Uber's work, the question turns from one of perception to one of law and textual interpretation.

California, by way of the DMV, has chosen to define an autonomous vehicle in regulation as a vehicle equipped with technology "...that has the capability of operating or driving the vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring of a natural person...." Thus, the factual question that confronted Uber before it made its decision to deploy the vehicles in California was simple: "is this vehicle capable of driving without being monitored or controlled by a driver?"

For all of their impressive capabilities, it is a matter of public record that Uber's vehicles often require human intervention. By extension, those vehicles require constant monitoring by a human driver. On that basis, Uber likely thought that, while not toeing the industry line, its vehicles do not meet the definitional threshold necessary to trigger the state's autonomous vehicle testing regulations.

Of course, what regulatory history there is that points to a different intent, one that tracks with the DMV's argument, is no doubt informative and interesting as a matter of historical record, but it should not overcome the obvious strictures of the regulation as written.

In the meantime, the DMV has sent Uber a cease and desist letter. While the merits of regulation are often a matter of debate, the even application of the plain language of the law should not be. Unfortunately, it appears that Uber, by dint of its reputation, is facing unwanted "special treatment" by its regulator. Worse, the DMV may be expanding the reach of its regulations after the fact. If that's the case, and certainty is lost, so too will be the very definitional purpose of the DMV's regulations – to make regular.

from the you-don't-own-what-you-bought dept

We've talked a lot about the end of ownership society, in which companies are increasingly using copyright and other laws to effectively end ownership -- where they put in place restrictions on the things you thought you bought. This is bad for a whole variety of reasons, and now it's especially disappointing to see that Tesla appears to be jumping on the bandwagon as well. The company is releasing its latest, much more high powered, version of autonomous self-driving car technology -- but has put in place a clause that bars Tesla owners from using the self-driving car for any competing car hailing service, like Uber or Lyft. This is not for safety/liability reasons, but because Tesla is also trying to build an Uber competitor.

We wrote about this a few months ago, and actually think it's a pretty cool idea. Part of the point is that it effectively will make Tesla ownership cheaper for those who want it, because they can lease it out for use at times when they're not using it. So your car can make money for you while you work or sleep or whatever. That's a cool idea.

But it's flat out dumb to block car owners from using the car however they want.

If Tesla wants to compete with Uber, that's great, but it should compete and offer a better deal for car owners, rather than artificially limiting what they can do. And the thing is, Elon Musk knows this. Remember, a few years ago when he famously freed up all Tesla patents into the public domain, recognizing that it was better to compete on execution rather than artificial legal limitations? So why not take that same approach with competing in car hailing services as well? Don't limit what owners can do with their cars. That's now ownership. ow they're just leasing.

Tesla's plan for a competing ride hailing service is a good idea, and I'm excited to see what the company does with it, but if it starts off by artificially blocking Tesla owners from using their cars on competing services, it makes me think that Tesla doesn't think it's own service will be very good, and therefor it needs to artificially lock Tesla owners into its own platform, rather than competing on the merits. That seems antithetical to the message that Tesla and Elon Musk have given off in the past. Hopefully Musk reconsiders this anti-consumer move and recognizes that Tesla can build such a service that can stand on its own merits without artificially restricting Tesla owners.